What is the issue?
An attempt­ed expla­na­tion.

By Felix Rohn­er, PANArt

Every year, the Edu­ca­tion and Cul­ture Depart­ment of the Can­ton of Bern awards a prize to four musi­cians.

This year, Sabi­na Schär­er and Felix Rohn­er were hon­ored for their many years of work on sound sculp­tures and in par­tic­u­lar for their cre­ation, the ​“Hang”.

Musikpreise des Kan­tons Bern 2020

The Hang®, cre­at­ed by Sabi­na Schär­er and Felix Rohn­er in 2000, and pro­duced and dis­trib­uted by PANArt Hang­bau AG, Bern, Switzer­land, is pro­tect­ed by copyright.

Why this is so, and what it means, we want to answer by means of ques­tions that are fre­quent­ly asked by sup­pli­ers of hand pans and oth­er peo­ple inter­est­ed in the topic.

PANArt Hang Man­u­fac­tur­ing Ltd. is a Swiss com­pa­ny based in Bern. The com­pa­ny is engaged in the con­struc­tion of sound sculp­tures made of ​“Pang®”, a com­pos­ite mate­r­i­al devel­oped and patent­ed by PANArt. Among oth­er things, the com­pa­ny devel­oped the now world-famous Hang® sculp­ture. Felix Rohn­er, Sabi­na Schär­er, Basil Rohn­er and David Rohn­er are present­ly work­ing in the company.

The enor­mous eco­nom­ic impor­tance of intel­lec­tu­al prop­er­ty for our soci­ety and the need for effi­cient legal pro­tec­tion of inno­va­tions and invest­ments in tech­nol­o­gy and cul­ture are now recognized.

Eng­lish sub­ti­tles can be acti­vat­ed in the video settings.

Con­tri­bu­tion of the Coopzeitung on the top­ics Panart, Hang and Balu, 13.01.2020

Balu is the com­pre­hen­sive term for a sound body con­sist­ing of the instru­ments Balu Sei, Balu Sai, Balu Sui and Godo. The video shows the PANArt tuners play­ing the instruments. 

For many years now Michael Paschko from Dort­mund has been doc­u­ment­ing and com­ment­ing on the work of PANArt Hang Man­u­fac­tur­ing Ltd. His web­site www​.hang​blog​.org has become an essen­tial source of infor­ma­tion on our activ­i­ties – not to be missed! The site has just been relaunched with up-to-date con­tent and a new layout. 

In 1976 the steel­pan arrived in Bern. In 2016 PANArt intro­duced the Hang Bal. From the ​“round the neck” steel­band via the Hang to the ​“round the shoul­der” Hang Bal Spiel.

With footage and pho­tos from PANArt’s archive, Basil Rohn­er’s video gives us an overview of 40 years of work on the ring of steel.